Mephe

Logged on last night with my 51 crab.

Clicked LFG, clicked enter with defaults. First attempt dumped me right back in Oro where I started.

Second time entered again. Got in to a lambda, followed team to first mob on the left, somebody died, once person dropped and then everybody else quit.... WTH?

Third time cleared a few mobs, went in and the DPS check... err security bot stopped us (only 7 people left). Decided to clear all the mobs for xp. Team quit when all the mobs are gone. (Interface around 60% or more now)

4th time. I get lead star... ok um. Lets clear all! At the start we had nine. I push us all but the poor blaster into 1 team. blaster quits. We clear all, its easy one guy has his ION and uses it alot (he rocked). All clear, go in to the bot, he goes down. without any orders 1/2 the team goes for weapons other for acids. We get a couple each. Big speach, we farm the acids and close all the portals. Clear all the mobs around AV and engage. Along the way use use pacifiers, and AV goes down. We are all shocked. An 8 man pug with a "leader" that has never got even close wins. Interface is unlocked and I get an uncommon as a reward.

I go back to pocket D and get picked up on a 16 man league for lamda. We failed on the AV at the end. Sorta strange how the 8 man with no real leadership could win but the 16 man failed. Ah well.

I LOVE IT! Can't wait to do some BAF runs hopefully tonight.

THANK YOU Paragon!

So it sounds like the new incarnate powers will solve all the issues. AOEs are the MMs weakspot and need to stay that way. I am fine with that.

Of all my 50s my MM is the one I am least interested in taking to the new raids. Tin mage and apex really cut me deep, much worse than any other 50 I got. I think resummoning and reequiping pets makes me unhappy somehow. I need a 12 step program for that. I call it fire/traps, and it only needs 12 more levels to 50

My bots/trap is a level 50+1 powerhouse. My bots enjoy 45% def if all is going well. I have provoke now that stamina is free. The typical well built MM can steam roll over most old content at 0/8 solo. I would say MMs and brutes are pretty close to the highest amount of damage and defense you would ever want to give a single toon in COH.

And now with the new level 54 content (tin/apex/incarnate trials), I see a huge shift. My end bar is getting chewed up harder than an all toggle spines/dark scrapper, because I need to resumon so often and re-equip my pets after every other spawn. My damage output has been severlry reduced because most times my pets run around unequiped or dead. My traps contributions also suffers.

Is this a Lrn2ply issue?
So is this the new normal for MMs, is this even a problem?
Do the new Incarnate powers fix this problem?
Does the AT need a buff to better handle this?

Lrn2play - dont think so; the new content does have some parts where you need to pickup the stealth IO and pop it in sprint and then unsummon all. I dont see how constantly using goto commands is gonna fly. My pets dont ever seem to do what I want them to no matter how many goto commands I give them. The pet AI is pretty hard to handle as it is, I dont see how making MMs more dependant on it would be a good thing.

The new normal, is this a problem? I think we are seeing more and more def debuff, higher tohit, and nasty AOEs. This hits us hard in 4 ways. We have no def debuf resistance, the higher levels and higher tohit bypass def, and AOEs are pretty good at killing our pets fast, our minions are already level -3.
So is this more devastating to MMs than to be expected? I think so. All def based classes now have to deal with the increased tohit and def debuff. The pet levels is something we have had to deal with all the time, and level shifts should fix it. The AOEs... this may be a problem when you stack everything else on top.

So I think the issue is AOEs with amped up tohit, from higher level foes (one shotting pets) may be a bit more damaging to MMs than how its supposed to be. The biggest problem is that pets are not smart enough to handle the AOEs. In WOW this problem was solved by giving pets massive AOE resistance to ignore the "dont stand in the goo" issue of boss fights.

Will this get any better with the new incarnate buffs? I dont see anything that will make it so pets are not getting one shotted by high powered high tohit AOEs, unless everybody picks the res/def buff and we are always close so its overlapped.

Some thoughs on the MM AT:
The MM is all about having building blocks(pets) that create your sword and shield around your toon to allow you to do damage and take damage. Each block that falls off gives you a weaker sword and shield and thats how you take down a MM. One shotting all the pets at the same time... well thats like shutting off all the scrappers armor and taking away their broadsword at the same time. Now becuase I picked traps my secondary is pretty darn strong all by itself, but I think the current AOEs of doom are abit too much for MMs.

Contrast a Fire/Traps to a Bots/Traps. In old content the bots/traps will have an easier time staying alive while still putting out good damage. In the new content the pets seem to be taking away value from the MM becuase of the end cost and resummoning time wasted when you probably should just give up and use your secondary most of the time. A fire/traps on the other hand is able to put out good damage and use traps just like normal as long as they can stay alive. The new content made it harder for both the MM and the fire/traps to stay alive but the MM is now unable to to do much of anything besides resummon alot.

If we dont go the WOW way and give all pets high levels of AOE def, what else can we do?

MM vengence.
This is a power much like nemi leuts get. So when one minion dies this power goes off and gives all other MM pets a 50% heal, 30% AOE def buff, and 50% resist all for 10 seconds. This power can not stack at all with any other copy of this power. This should help space out the deaths a MM needs to worry about, but still be short enough that its possible to kill all the pets via single target attacks when getting attacked by many foes.

-or-

Pet AI modes.
1 - Off - Bodyguard is 100% no matter what you command in this mode. Pets do nothing, not even follow you or defend themselves. You want them to move... goto or follow. Goto shuts off when they reach the target, and follow works like goto except where you stand is the automatic goto target. You want them to attack something target it and issue attack my target command. They will cycle through attacks, and if something is out of range of the attack they cancel that attack and select the next attack in the cycle until the target is dead, but they will NOT move into range. If a goto or follow command is issued all attacks and targets are lost.
2 - Attack off, move on - Bodyguard is 100% on. Pets will only follow you by default. If you give them an attack target they will close to melee/attack range if they have shorter ranged attack and thats the attack they want to execute next. Once then enter attack range they do not move back to the MM when they have a longer ranged attack. They will only move again if they need to reenter attack range. They will not defend themselves and you must target what you want to kill. If a goto or follow command is issued all attacks and targets are lost.
3 - On - Currently what we have. I think the newer content is showing just how bad pet AI is, and probably why WOW went with pets that bosses dont oneshot with dont stand here AOE patches or powers because its too much work to code the pets to respect that.

Is this because of the new updater? Every other release I remember a pre download so those of us with slow connections dont have to wait all night before we can play.

Whats the deal?

There is one very good reason for buying a BOTZ at level 50. They are dirt cheap last time I looked. Pretty much because they are useless once you exemp down and random reward rolls get em and want to unload em.

But still anybody that has played this game as long as samuel should have billions of inf sitting around right? Unless they are a market luddite that hasnt sold off the extra junk lying around for huge cash and prizes... "cough"

I think I got a level 30 karma that I crafted for like 1 or 2 mil the other week... practically giving these things away!

My SOed level 40 Fire/Fire tank can do the fire ambush map full clear (the single room with 2 crystals and the 60 minute timer) in 8 minutes set at 0/8/bosses on which will max the ticket cap without dying or with even close to a possibility of dieing. Anybody have some brute times for a full clear on this map?

So a pretty simple fire/fire tank build needs no support and only needs burn, fire sword circle, combustion, buildup, firery embrance, fire shield, plasma shield, healing flames, consume and blazing aura. So thats like level 37? The trick is to munch the insperations as fast as they come in to max out your def, health, acc, and damage. I blow up both crystals so I have a constant stream of critters at the agro cap on me at all times. I need no support (i never bring others into my maps), but I dont know how you would ever keep anybody else alive, but since I need no support I would not care.

I have a dark/kin L32 and a fire/traps L30.

As silas stated the -tohit of dark costs ALOT relative to the quick animating, high damage that fire gets. My dark/kin is pretty much unsoloable to my standards. He runs out of end before he can kill a mob at -1/x2/nobosses. My fire/traps on the other hand can handle that setting without much of an issue. Both are still very light on IO sets.

Cones are less optimal with traps than sphere AOE. The seekers help bunch stuff up, and then you want to keep it that way for trip mines, poison trap and acid mortar. Rain of Fire works pretty well with caltrops and poison trap.

If you really dont want fire/traps I would suggest Dual Pistols and traps. Hail of bullets and rain of bulltets would work well with the bunched up mobs traps wants. Just be sure to use fire ammo and not the default knockback ammo.

Still having trouble with my elec/elec dom build that has the ice mastery. I so far have had to remake him every patch because each upgrade says it cant read the end of the stream.

PM me know if you want the file for him.

If you can solo the arc, then you have a good idea that your toon is worth the incarnate power. I use it as a test to see how good or bad my toon is. So far they have all passed.

My Elec/Elec perma dom just soloed that arc last night after dinging 50. Trapdoor was held, confused, and end drained before he got out a second bifurcation. Almost as easy as my DP/MM blaster soloing him.

The harder one to solo is the Hero1 + vanguard EB fight. If you can solo that you are ready for the incarnate trials. Hero1 even as an EB resists mez, so you have to have another stradegy for him.

Solo does not mean no temp powers, or insp candy. It just means you understand your toon, your weaknesses and you fix it up. Dont have enough damage, backup radio is cheap, so is a shivan, or a nuke. Also if you have not IOed up your toon, do you really think they deserve to do the end game content?

Happened to me last night, first time I have ever run this SF and its the last time I will ever run it. Its pretty lame anyway since its the old style do a bunch of missions and we have an AV at the end that will take 1 minute to kill.

I got a GM response in my email 3 hours after I sent the petition for help. Yeah the SF broke up way before then.

The debuffs only stack up to 10 times and each debuff lasts I think 8-10 seconds. The -res debuff is 2.5% -res so at max you get -25% res, -regen maxes out at -100%. AVs and GMs resist those by 100% I thought. So you drop back down to some pretty sad numbers.

Single target debuffing for stalkers doesnt look all that interesting. My first thought is the DOT and stack that up for some extra damage. Currently it sounds like rain powers are king of the procs, so caltrops may become your super interface proc monster. There is no 10second between proc timers currently, dont know if that will get changed though, because without it rain powers are pretty crazy.

Stalker DPS seems to be the biggest problem when dealing with AVs and GMs. The debuffs just dont seem to be strong enough to compensate unless they get changed to unresistable. My guess would be the Lore pets offer the largest DPS gain of all the new powers based on the pylon numbers from crab VEATs and thier pets.

This of course may all change as more info comes out and changes come down to open beta.

Farming is about getting a low cost build that can handle 8 man spawns solo, and be able to run the map as fast as possible to maximize profit versus time.

You can make a Arch/MM or DP/MM maybe even a Rifle/MM that can farm, but I just dont see how you can ever match the speed and efficency of a ss/fire brute.

Your build is a bit more expensive than I would expect, but lets use it as an example. You can with 65 fury and rage, do a footstomp that does ~310 damage, and burn that will finish up the rest of the mob. If you have bosses on they are down to almost 1/2 health and you drag them with you to the next mob where they will die from the footstop/burn combo. With 90% fire resists and healing flames you are never in any danager against demons.

My DP/MM toon that is more expensive than your brute for IOs, can do about the same amount of damage as your stop/burn combo but instead of it being done every 8 seconds I can only do it every 35 seconds and the animation time is longer. During the Hail of Bullets down time I have to use 1 AOE, and 2 cones to do 1/2 the amount of damage. So at 50+1 I can run 0x8 solo as long as bosses are off, AND the mobs do S/L, AND they dont mez, AND they dont debuff def. An Arc/MM will do a bit better because ROA is up every 20 seconds or less, but many of the other things have to be set (no defdebuff, S/L damage, no bosses).

It can be done on a blaster, but the build will always be expensive to get the large recharge and S/L def. And you probably have to have bosses off to prevent faceplants that could happen if their attacks hit you 2 times in a row. The room for error is much smaller than a ss/fire brute.

I dont farm anymore, but I used to farm with my warshade on the demon map. Not as fast as a brute but good enough. My 51 DP/MM just did the Umi arc and was fast and safe but only with bosses off, and at 5x, 8x would not have been a problem. I dont farm anymore because tips and A merits seem to be more simple, with less effort and just as good profit.

There is a good reason you see alot of RO teams with:

Trappers,
VEATS,
Rads,
EMPs,
Kins.

newish to RO are:
Shield defense,
and Lightning rod melee

We break the game with win.

Lit bit of a necro but wanted to give a final recap to my DP findings to go along with Elecktros.

Disclaimer: I dont do SOs, and havnt messed with them since IOes came out. By level 40 my toons almost always have all the IOes that make them perform well (recharge or def)

I have a level 50+1 DP/MM with the musculature total core revamp slotted. This toon is fully IOed out for def (S/L and range at 33%) and recharge global with hasten = 137.5%. Unfortunetly this is my only 50 blaster, so relative to other blasters this tricked out ... no clue.

Some of this pertains to blasters and some to DP and some to MM:

Pros:
Massive AOE damage.
With high recharge builds and a secondary with AOE attacks, DP has a AOE only attack chain. I always have one of my AOEs recharged and ready when doing level 45+ content.
PBAOE destruction.
Stealth + Crashless PBAOE nuke that gives you +10 def during the animation and a secondary that has PBAOE powers + def = I win. Notice that HoB is one piece of the I win. You MUST have the other parts for it to work. Stealth is important to be sure to get to the middle of the mob before you get whacked with mez. You also need some other AOE powers to finish off the left overs. Psyshockwave is my favorite. MM and Fire seem to be the best secondaries to make this work.
Incendiary ammo: Looks like from the math, you can jack up your damage to mid level (or better) blaster performance with this ammo. Combined with the AOEs and you can become a killing machine.
Empty clips takes -def so you can slot achillies -res proc.
This does work when you have fire ammo selected from the combat logs.


Cons:
Lack of a high damage single target attack.
I know the new balance takes into account that high damage attacks have long recharges, but they havnt changed fire, archery, ice so we always have to measure against them, and DP comes up short.
Cryo, and Chemical ammo are pretty much useless.
Swap ammo needs to be slotable and it should take -def sets (new for chemical because you cant slot -dam), slows for cryo, and knockback for normal ammo. Yes this would allow it to take the -res proc, and damage procs, but at least that would provide an interesting alternative to fire ammo, and it would eat up slots.

What can this toon do that others cant?
The AOEs with spawn clearing level of damage is what blasters are made for, and DP seems to be near perfect for that. My 51 crab and 51 elec/nin stalker are the closest to my blaster for AOE damage but the blaster is over the top in terms of no fuss AOE carnage. The crab can bring it like the blaster only because of the pets, and omega bomb, the stalker is pretty much lightning rod and ball lightning, clean up.

What can other toons do that this one cant?
With massive AOE power comes... glass cannon brittleness. The crab and the stalker both show off the worst of the blaster. Mez protection and defenses are handed out to toons that come close to what a blaster can do. Every 27 seconds my stalker can do buildup + LR + ball lightning and do almost the same amount of AOE damage as a DP/MM blaster every 35 seconds (both builds cost about the same for IOs needed). The stalker has full mez protection and softcapped to M/R/AOE. During the LR downtime though the stalker does not have the same AOEs the blaster has.
The crab has even more defense (to team even!), resistance, and HPs, and in the long run with pets always up (possible with enough recharge) they do more constant AOE damage. The omega spike of damage is smaller and on a much longer recharge, but the crab is one man army that is very hard to kill.
The price blasters pay for having top damage is very high.

And the most important part... Is it fun?
Hell yes! With the constant threat of mez and death, it is definetly heart pounding fun livin on the edge. When you rush into a mob of ritki, before the tank, have the guardians confused and cast AM on you, and unload Hell of Bullets.... good times!
Always having an AOE ready to blast the mobs... very nice!